[Ed. note: with everything going on I forgot to upload this post on October 30. So I’m back-posting…]

It took a little bit of doing (the promise of beers the next time we play Stonecreek Golf Club would do), but I was able to talk to the guy I referred to in my last “State of the Race” post a second time. One might note that his prediction about Hillary pulling out of the final debate was off, and Trump’s tax returns still haven’t been released (something he’s still sticking with, BTW), but his prediction about African-American voters appears to be spot on. We talked about the state of the race only ten days out from Election Day, and here are the highlights:

1. His sense is that Trump is still holding a +6 lead nationwide, and that in the end he’s gonna come in somewhere around 49% of the vote and Hillary Clinton around 43%.

2. He notes that while the polls appear to be tightening somewhat in Trump’s favor, most of the media polls are still heavily oversampling Democrats over Republicans (anywhere from 5 to 15 percent) but that will change in the next week if the pollsters want to have any credibility come Election Day. He things in the end it will be anywhere whom an even D/R split to at best a D+2.

3. If you want to know where the campaigns think the race stands watch the candidates, where they’re going, and the venues they are choosing. He notes the Trump campaign is totally focused on Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, but he expects that to change in the next week as he believe Florida and Ohio are solidly Trump and Trump may expand his map to places like New Hampshire and Michigan. The Clinton campaign remains (at least to him) a total mystery: “Trump is filling convention centers and they’re having trouble filling anything larger than a gym. The candidate is deliberately choosing low-profile events and relying on surrogates like Barack and Michelle Obama to do her work. Either her campaign is overwhelmingly confident – hard to believe if they’re looking at the same polls I am- or they’re living in their own self-made bubble. I don’t get it. I think she’s getting lousy advice.”

4. Ten days is still a lot of time – an eternity, really – and a lot could happen in that time. But right now I’m saying that, just like every other time during this election season, the Trump campaign is turning conventional wisdom on its head. All things staying equal, it still looks really good for Trump.